For my contribution, I added new resources to the Campus Pulse project. The new resources include the RITFOSS and RITLUG wiki pages.

Why I Returned to This Project

As stated in my previous blog post, I think the Campuspulse mission resonates with me because I struggled to find resources and organizations as a freshman, so I would have loved having this available to me when I started at RIT. I also liked that the community was mostly RIT students interested in FOSS, so there’s instant relatability and connection at Campuspulse compared to other projects. Adrian, the maintainer, and Ashton, another student in the FOSS class, have been an amazing help to me throughout this process. In addition to the great community at HFOSS, I also appreciated how easy it was to contribute. The bash script for development testing worked without a hitch for me, so I was easily able to preview my changes locally before committing. The documentation, code commenting, and directory structure were very clean and organized, which isn’t always the case for open source projects. I didn’t have any roadblocks while contributing, and I believe it’s because of those factors above that I had such a smooth experience.

The Issue

Campuspulse has an impressive array of links ranging from reporting various issues, informational utilities, campus services, maps, housing cost data, dining hours, etc., but clubs and organizations are missing from that list. When I saw the GitHub issue Adrian posted about adding links to RITLUG and RITFOSS, I felt this was exactly what I was looking for. The links are added in YAML format, so I looked up the syntax and added all of the relevant fields to add the resources to the home page. I put them under a new section because they did not fit any of the existing categories. Once I started the local dev environment to preview my changes, I saw the resources were added as intended!

PR

My Experience

Returning to the campus pulse was a breeze now that I had already contributed to the project. I already had my environment set up and was able to get straight to work implementing my changes. Unlike my last issue, this one is a feature/frontend contribution, so I had the added satisfaction of seeing the links I added on the homepage. Another difference between this contribution and the last one is that it involves frontend work, so I had to make design decisions such as whether to put the links in a new section or an existing one. A bug fix such as changing a discord link doesn’t come with as many creative decisions. I hope this results in more interest for the RITLUG and RITFOSS projects!

PR2

Evaluation of Effort

Once again, my contribution itself was relatively easy, but I put a lot of effort into engaging with the community. The main skills I learned were creating PRs, engaging with contributors, YAML, and frontend design. I continued to monitor and engage with the Campuspulse Discord as well as the Github to keep up to date. I really enjoy the community and am glad to contribute to a project I believe in. The YAML format for the resources was quite intuitive and I didn’t find myself having to research a ton to get my links added. I would absolutely contribute to this project again.